In an escalating standoff reminiscent of the Cold War, China on Tuesday responded angrily to news that two U.S. B-52 bombers had flown over a contested chain of islands in the East China Sea without first alerting Beijing — just days after China unilaterally announced an expanded air-defense zone around the islands.
The Pentagon’s sudden dispatch of the bombers was meant as a show of support for close ally Japan, which is in a protracted sovereignty dispute with China over the islands. But the move risks escalating an already heated situation, according to an editorial posted on the website of China Daily, a state-supported newspaper known to closely track Beijing’s official positions on such matters.
“The Japanese and U.S. hysteria is unnecessary, and potentially dangerous, because it is based on a serious misreading, if not intentional distortion, of Chinese strategic purposes,” states the editorial, which claimed Washington has no legitimate basis for challenging the new air-defense zone, known in Chinese military parlance as an Air Defense Identification Zone, or “ADIZ.”
“Dozens of countries, including Japan and the United States, have their own ADIZs. And the US, as the inventor of such zones, should be well aware of their defensive nature,” the editorial states. “If the world’s sole superpower, with an unrivaled military, needs multiple ADIZs to fend off perceived threats, why should China not need any?”
Publication of the editorial came as The Wall Street Journal first reported that the Washington had dispatched the two B-52 bombers from Guam Monday evening specifically to challenge the Chinese claim to exclusive control of the airspace.
U.S. officials have dismissed China’s announcement Saturday that it was establishing the new zone around the island chain, which is known in China as the Diaoyu and in Japan as the Senkaku Islands. The two Asian powers have long disputed control of the islands — and of potentially rich energy deposits in the region.
The Obama administration asserted that the U.S. military had no intention of altering existing flight patterns of U.S. military aircraft to fly around the new zone, which Chinese officials said was being created to protect against “potential air threats” in the East China Sea.
Friction over the island chain has ebbed and flowed over the past two years, but tensions soared again recently when Chinese officials accused Japan of trying to nationalize the chain. Since then, Chinese and Japanese coast guard ships have regularly confronted each other in surrounding waters. Japan further angered Beijing last month by threatening to shoot down unmanned Chinese drones that Beijing says it plans to send on surveillance missions over the islands.
Tuesday’s editorial in China Daily sought to portray the Chinese military’s creation of the new zone as justified and in no way prompted by the recent escalation of tensions with Japan. But the article also appeared to carry a veiled threat by making reference to “hostile intruders” in the region.
“Our Defense Ministry made it clear that the zone does not target any specific country,” the editorial sates. “And no country except Japan and the U.S. have voiced concerns. This is because other countries know it is designed to only ferret out hostile intruders.”
China also indirectly accused conservative Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of overreacting to the news, arguing that U.S. and Japanese “complaints that the ADIZ is a ’unilateral’ move that changes ’the status quo’ are inherently false.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley contributed to this story, which is based in part on wire service reports.
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